Homesteading, Homeschooling, and Homemaking in the PNW

It’s Day 22

It’s day 22. Can you guess what my two pregnant rabbits were doing this morning? Nest-building. You can set a clock by these girls, they so regularly start nest-building on day 22. Sweetie Belle in particular greeted me with a full on hay mustache. She’s trying to dig a hole in the back corner of her cage. I will give her a nesting box in a few more days, though she will likely be like Lola and Phoebe were their first times and give birth in a big pile of hay instead of the box. They don’t seem to realize what the box is for the first time, though Phoebe had no problems knowing what it was for the second time she gave birth.

Phoebe’s kits are thriving, healthy and much fatter than her previous litter at this age. It makes a big difference not being born on the hottest day of the year and spending the first two weeks of your life in a heatwave. All of their eyes are open now and they are hopping out of the nesting box to sleep beside their mama. One went missing. When we changed the nesting box last night there were only 7. We checked through all the hay in the cage, double and triple checked, but no 8th kit. We have been so careful after what happened the first time. I just couldn’t figure out how it could have gotten out.

I thought it would remain a mystery, but this morning when I went out, I heard a rustling noise and startled a rat. It must have got in the shed a couple of days ago when we had the door propped open and were sweeping out all the dirty hay. Anyway, I chased it out of the shed with a broom. I think it must have dragged the kit through the cage mesh and eaten it. I feel so bad for Phoebe. This is the second litter where she has lost a kit.

I spent a half an hour down on my hands and knees with a flash light checking for anymore rats or any opening in the floor or walls of the shed that might have been another way to get in. Fortunately I did not find anything like that, so I think it was just the one that got trapped in the shed and now it is out. Unfortunately, neither one of my knees is on speaking terms with me now. The bad one has been giving me shooting pains all week as it was. Well, now even the less bad one is miserable. But I didn’t want to wait for the son to get up, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t leaving my bunnies in jeopardy. It is what it is. I may have to pull out the cane for a few days though. I’m icing them now, so hopefully that will prevent any swelling.

At least my finger is healing. I can type a bit more now, though the finger does get tired fast.

As an update on our intruder the other day–when I contacted the group he was supposedly canvassing for, they said they had had no one in our area that day and also that they train their volunteers to only go to the front doors. The lady who emailed me said she thought it sounded like suspicious behavior. The more I think about it, I think the guy only had one paper to give out, not a stack, and didn’t have a bag that I could see where he might have had more.

But that’s not all. One car and two houses were broken into during the day yesterday a couple of blocks down. So now I think he was looking to find out who was home during the day and who didn’t have a presence. Okay, it could have just been a coincidence, but it doesn’t feel like it now. He wasn’t caught. The police came around door to door asking questions, if anyone had been around lately. I told him about the guy. They had heard about the guy from a couple other folks who had been home then too, so it sounds more and more like he was casing the houses. It might even have been one of the guys who robbed the neighbors this summer, since they got away (but had to leave their bags behind).